Chinatown (2022)

First off, I love action movies, dramas...anything that has fighting in it I'm there. So when I came across this I knew I was going to watch it.

I've become addicted to Korean action dramas and have watched other Korean genre dramas.

I have tried to expand my addiction to Japanese and Chinese dramas but no offense, they don't hold up the same.

Watching this drama had me cringing and eye rolling throughout every episode.

The mom in the beginning loses her husband and two kids. Luckily one survives but this led the mom to go a bit crazy. She's bada** to the core with her martial art skills but throughout the series her missing children slowly show up and the reunion was so dead!

Speaking of dead, their funerals aren't as emotional as the Korean drama funerals. Loved ones died and they were like 'we'll miss you...who's up for lunch.

Now the fighting scenes. More eye rolls though this.

I like a build up that leads to fighting but it seemed like the writers didn't know how to build up the fighting scenes so they just let them say a few words then 'FIGHT'. I was thinking half the time why are they fighting?
The constant palms to the chest, back, and head, and spurting out fake blood in EVERY SINGLE fight got old pretty quick. I'm not medical expert but....if you're spitting out blood....that means you have internal injuries right? Nope! These people were able to get back up and fight some more. They finally got the color of the blood right in the 29th episode though.

Throughout this whole series there was only one plot...Every bad guy wanted to take over Tong Street. What was so special about this street? They never stated why it was so special.
Whenever one bad guy gets defeated and another comes along and puts fear in people a speech has to be made about how the nice people of Tong Street will prevail. This speech is given throughout the series. After the 4th 'we can do it speech' it gets old quick.

The portrayal of American soldiers back in the 30's made America look horrible. It may be dead on but I'm not familiar with the Thailand/Chinese culture of the 1930's.

Another take away was that all of the bad guys died quickly with a lot of episodes left. Then close to the end more side characters started dying quicker than quick sand so the cast became smaller and smaller. I mean who else could be left to die? Both the bad guys and good guys died pretty early.

If this didn't have any fighting in it I would've passed. The romance part killed the majority of it for me. This is one drama that I will not watch again.

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Drama is pretty good, but did not feel original..

As I really loved A Fist Within Four Walls, I decided to check this drama out as by the posters and trailers, it looks to be a different adaptation with the same period martial arts piece attached. However, when I watched the drama, first episode did not intrigue me to watch the second episode, nor the third as the story felt the exact same. Main characters' fathers get killed, one father was accused of killing the other. In the end, it was revealed that a mastermind was behind killing them. It all got boring too fast. Even with that exact same formula, I got back to watching it again after the fourth episode when I saw a clip online of the fight scene. The fights are an improvement from AFWFW, although it was only good for the first few episodes. The final climax fight scene never lived up to expectations with close camera shots, which made it feel uncomfortable to watch, unlike AFWFW with cool wide angled shots, along with the high quality slow motion shots, which in this drama they never used which was a bummer. But as time passes, camera quality improved greatly, but it would've been nice to get the slow-mo cams again.

Just like AFWFW, even more characters die in this drama. Even Ruco's character dies at the end of the drama who suffered from heart problems as he was too focused on finding his love interest Natalie Tong who disappeared after the final fight with the mastermind, who was Carlos Chan's character, father of Natalie and Grace Chan's characters, who was asked by him to pose as Ruco's long lost sister. The chemistry between Natalie Tong and Ruco Chan didn't feel natural, there were barely any emotional scenes between them like Ruco and Nancy's characters from AFWFW, but Joel Chan and Elene Yiu's chemistry was pretty good for the most part. Philip Ng's character went from a Bruce Lee badass from AFWFW, to a dumb but pure innocent minded character in this drama. His character still fights well though, so he's still a badass in this drama and thankfully he didn't die in the end as his character was too cute! That can't be said for Yuen Qiu's character as she plays Ruco's mom who barely have any fight scenes. Like come on! This is one of her last TVB dramas and you can't even give her a proper departure! Thankfully the emotional scenes, especially her goodbye to Ruco when she found out about his heart condition and forces him to leave her and find Natalie was really effective and made it a huge tear jerker when he read the letter given by her.

And then we have the two baddies of the drama, Jimmy Au and Cheung Kwok Keung's characters, who dies too fast in the drama! We barely get to see Jimmy Au fight in the drama, as we've seen how capable he is in AFWFW, and Cheung Kwok Keung could've gotten more action scenes as well. They got rid of both to save room for the big baddie of the drama, Carlos Chan, who was the killer of Ruco and Joel's dads as he had used an acupuncture to manipulate Ruco's dad into thinking Joel's dad is the bad guy they were fighting, resulting in their deaths, just so he could take over the streets, which his plan failed as Jimmy and Kwok Keung ambushed him so that Tong Yan Street can be theirs instead.

The OST in this drama was pretty good. It was one of the first dramas Ruco get to sing again after he sang the theme for Succession War in 2018, and didn't even get a chance to sing the theme for his 2021 drama, Sinister Beings, so it was nice they let him sing in this drama as I like his voice. Even if the drama was actually supposed to release in 2020 but got delayed to make room for a different drama, Go! Go! Go! Operation C9. Ending OST by Hana Kuk was also good as usual as her voice is one of the best in the industry.

Overall, if you're looking for good fight scenes again, this drama is your go to. But if you're watching this for the story, do NOT watch AFWFW then watch this as it will ruin the experience for you. I'm guessing this is more for the ones who hasn't seen AFWFW, but they should've treated it better with including new stuff for the story for the long time TVB fans like me.

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Looking for a drama that is so bad it's good? Look no further!

This is a first for me. I'm actually going to compliment a drama that Chin Pang is the lead in. But, of course it's not because of the reasons I imagine most people would expect in a positive review.

Have you seen "The Room" or "Samurai Cop"? I'm sure you have. These 2 movies are the ones I instantly think of when asked "can a movie be so bad that it is actually good?" I would definitely put "The Righteous fists" in the same category.

Let me start off with the first theme of this drama, which is the dream of starting a new life through emigration. In the opening scene, you see the three families of the main characters on a boat, out at sea, heading to Thailand (I don't recall them saying they were going to Bangkok, but I guess that's where they were heading). Each family knows traditional Chinese martial arts and believes Thailand is a land of hope and opportunity: they were basically chasing the American dream.

The irony of course is, Thailand really isn't for them. I would even go so far as to say, it's the worst possible place they could have picked on the world map to call home.

The fighting is non-stop. The fathers of the main characters fight on the boat because pirates were trying to kidnap the women and children. There's more fighting when they are in Chinatown because there is a seedy underworld in the heart of Chinatown. The fathers end up fighting and killing each other because I guess one of them betrayed them. Their children are separated because the house they were trapped in gets burned to the ground. I imagine you would agree with me when I say no-one wants to live in a place where there is constant violence and a high risk of tragedies. I guess, when deciding to emigrate, they never sought the advice of a realtor because a decent one might have told them: the three most important things to consider when buying a home is "location, location, location".

The police are corrupt, the triads run Chinatown, there are foreign soldiers, from I guess America, who enjoy sexually assaulting girls, drugs are everywhere and killing people, and the stash house can be found quite easily by the heroes, which I find particularly annoying because surely stock management would have improved after the first raid. I hope you can see where I'm going with this - the plot is so bad, it's actually very funny to watch.

Talk is also cheap in this fictional world. No-one talks away their problems; when two characters have an argument, it takes less than three sentences before they both realise the only way to resolve their differences is to duke it out. One truth every character seems to accept at face value is "let your fists do the talking", hence the title of the series "The Righteous fists". Might means right. Simple. But if that is the case, then I don't really see how this would make Thailand a place of hope and opportunity for good, law-abiding citizens. The main characters definitely come across as such. Sure, they like fighting but I never got the impression they emigrated to Thailand because they wanted to fight all the time.

One thing that I find immensely funny is when characters take a particularly hard beating, they cough up a mouthful of blood, which stains their teeth, then they get right back up and keep fighting! Internal bleeding is as serious as it gets and I highly doubt anyone would be able to get up after being injured that badly. Speaking of getting hurt badly, Chin Pang's character gets stabbed in the back, literally and figuratively, and he still manages to win his fight against someone who isn't hurt at all! His character then takes a machete in the stomach, in maybe the next scene, and he is still not killed off! Again, it's crazy how plot armour works in Chin Pang's favour.

That's why I'm giving this series an overall rating of 5/10 despite the bad, no awful, script. I'm entertained and ultimately, I guess that is the best measure of a good TV drama or movie. Nevertheless, trash TV like this should not be encouraged.

I'll end this review by saying it's good to see Philip Ng in this because he is a legit action movie star. He is the guy who played Bruce Lee in the 2006 movie "Birth of the Dragon", and in this drama, he beats up so many people, it's like he's Neo in the Matrix. It's just a shame Chin Pang upstages him in the fight scenes they are both in: afterall, Chin Pang's character can literally punch people through walls! Crazy stuff but I expected nothing less from the joke that is Chin Pang's acting career.

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